Non Sum Qualis Eram
by lotuskasumi
Summary: "I did it, but it wasn't me!"... A strange device said to contain memories and thoughts is left on Clara's doorstep, leading her and Twelve to trace it back to its origins, and to confront a force that has been keeping tabs on them for quite some time. (Whouffaldi/Twelve x Clara)
1. Chapter 1

Speak not again  
Know you my heart  
As we stand worlds apart  
These troubled days

- Android Lust, "Wicked Days"

* * *

"What is it?"

"Careful. Don't want to lose that sunny attitude of yours – you'd have nothing left." Clara teased, surprised at the ease in which the words flowed out of her. It wasn't mean, not exactly, but it also wasn't _like _her_. Guess I'm not who I used to be either, _she thought to herself, eyeing the Doctor first in a short glance, and then full on as she turned to peer up at him. She met the Doctor's eyes without fear, but she felt a muscle twitching on the corner of her left eye, forcing her to scratch at it. "I was joking. It was a joke."

The corner of his mouth twitched. "I thought jokes were funny."

Clara shrugged. "I suppose it depends on your sense of humour." _And knowing how to laugh at yourself. _She pointed at the little white box she had handed to him, the catalyst for his first, gruff question. "Are you going to open it?"

"Is this a gift or something?" the Doctor asked, his mouth twisting around the key word in the sentence. _Gift. _Clara once heard that it meant something different in German. _Poison, I think? _It fit the current situation. The Doctor looked like he'd been forced to drink a full bottle of nightshade.

"I found it in front of my door this morning. The note said to bring it to you and listen." Clara opened up the satchel she had slung over her shoulder and dug inside it for the little eggshell card. It had a dark blue ribbon tied through the eye-hole, which had been knotted carefully around the box the Doctor was now holding with all the comfort of a cradling a bloody handkerchief. She handed the card to the Doctor as well, and took a slight half step back once he'd snatched it out of her hand.

_I'm not afraid of him, _Clara reminded herself, reminded the little voice that liked to speak up and tell her to go back, to turn away, to leave him. She hated that voice, and waited with ever-thinning patience for it to fade away and disappear completely. _But he can be rather... prickly. _Like a cat who purred and chirped to get you closer, only to unleash his claws at the last second, thinking he was returning your soft, fond pats, drawing only blood instead.

The Doctor examined both the box and the card with a glare like a dagger's edge. He put the card into his pocket, the least interesting of the pair, and examined the box with a keener stare. "Did you open it?" he asked.

"No. I thought I should wait for you."

"... That was clever of you. And probably for the best, I expect."

Clara's eyebrows darted up for an instant, but lowered quickly when she realized he wasn't insulting her. His voice, however gruff it was, contained just a bit of softness to it as well. He was complimenting her. "I should hope so," she said.

The Doctor pried open the box and dug out its contents. Clara looked the strange device over carefully. It looked like a hand-held tape recorder that journalists used to capture voice-only interviews. A few of her professors at university used them to tape their lectures, only this curious little thing had a large white face painted into its front, covered in a bubble of glass that distorted the image within. It looked vaguely like a clock, but Clara could see an arm and a shoulder inside as well, a bronze figure extended across the etchings of time, intruding upon the very surface of it.

"It's a Noiaphone," the Doctor said, answering the question Clara didn't ask. "It records thoughts and memories... Sometimes dreams, depending on the Comm-device inserted into its drive."

"Sounds useful," Clara said.

"It is," the Doctor replied, his voice a grunt. "Particularly for murder investigations or when people begin to lose their minds."

"Cheery. Who made it?"

"Nornia, LLC, a communications plant stationed on the outer edge of the Skuld system."

"And are these things legal?"

"Very legal, yes. Haven't you been listening? You said it yourself, they're dead useful. Besides, the Shadow Proclamation would have rounded them up and thrown the lot into Altair if they thought it could be a threat." The Doctor kept his lips just slightly parted, revealing the edge of his teeth grinding against each other in a sneer. _He does this when he's thinking, _Clara reminded herself, having long ago noted this behavioural quirk. _Just one more thing to get used to, after the initial surprise of that face._

"What I don't understand," the Doctor said, his words kicking Clara out of her thoughts, "is why anyone would bother giving it to _you, _instead of coming directly to me."

"I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want to do that," Clara said.

The Doctor studied her. "That was another joke," he said, not wording it as a question. Clara heard the slight raise in his tone all the same.

She smiled. It didn't last long. "Just a little."

The Doctor snorted, but Clara saw his lips twitch again.

Clara pushed her hands into the pocket of her coat and stepped closer to the console, keeping herself at a careful distance from the Doctor. His stance – rigid enough to rival marble – along with his gaze – lowered, shrouded in the shadows of his own thoughts – didn't invite company, but she had no intention of turning around and leaving. Not now. _Not yet._ Not until she figured out what was happening.

The Doctor set the Noiaphone up on the console and thumbed a red knob along the right edge. Static burst out of the single speaker in loud, deafening blares that could contain words, but none that Clara could make out. One glance at the Doctor was enough to tell her that he couldn't understand it, either. He scowled, and Clara joined him.

"Is it broken?" she wondered aloud.

"Quiet!" the Doctor hissed. "I heard something. Just now." He reached out and adjusted another knob, the volume this time. The static grew louder, making a vein in Clara's temple throb in response to the din.

Clara chewed on the inside of her cheek and listened.

"_All... never said... left behi... I did it... I did it - but it wasn't me!"_

The voice was tinny and shrill, like a song drowned out through static and playing out of only one side of the radio. Its words came out in panicked, long gasps, as if the person speaking had run a great distance... or were fighting for every breath. Clara frowned at both the voice and the device, tilting her head as she listened to the words play once again. The voice sounded desperate, obviously anxious, and alarmingly sure of itself. Strange, considering it was obviously so confused. _"I did it - but it wasn't me!"_

The Doctor looked Clara over carefully as the loop played for a third time, clearly waiting for her to speak. Clara would let him wait. She steadied her hands on the side of the TARDIS console and kept her shoulders back, her neck straight, and chin slightly raised. This posture usually helped her feel more grounded in times when it was rather hard to be anything close to that. It didn't fail her now.

_If he's really the Doctor, _Clara reasoned silently, not for the first time and perhaps not for the last, _he'll either start pestering me for comments or share his own..._ At least, she _thought_ it was the Doctor. He couldn't look any further from the pretty faced, sad eyed, crooked smiling deceptively younger man she had come to know over the past several months, but there was a familiarity in the air surrounding this new man. It unearthed a kind of kinship that Clara felt not in her mind nor her heart, but in something deeper, a sort of marrow-deep knowledge; it created the kind of sympathy she recognized in characters on the opposing sides of all the great literary dramas. _Enemies in the plot but companions of a common goal._

But this was certainly not a story. It was the furthest thing from a fairy tale now. And yet, here Clara stood by his side, still. _And here he is. With me. The Doctor... Still._

Well he _called_ himself the Doctor, and he primarily lived in the TARDIS as the other Doctors had done, though he liked to surprise Clara at her apartment without the consideration of having even a weak excuse to explain himself. And he seemed to know all the things the Doctor knew about her, ranging from the importance of leaves and pudding recipes, as well as a few more private details about herself she didn't make a habit of babbling to just about anyone. It made Clara chew on the inside of her cheek to think of the casual way he'd mentioned the freckle she had on her left side, just below her ribs, visible only when shirtless, and the jagged pearl pale scar on the back of her knee. "And that recurring dream you had where you were a mermaid – you had it for years, isn't that right? Starting when you were seven, and ending right around the time you got your first girlfriend. You drowned in the last dream and woke up in tears."

Clara shivered despite herself as the Doctor, _this _Doctor's, voice emerged from her memory of one of their earliest conversations. His voice had sounded just as the one playing from the Noiaphone did: casual, confident, with a creak in its tone that put her in mind of cobwebs, old lace, dusty attics, rusty hinges... All things old forced to bear a new light._ But that's not a problem. _It was far from unpleasant. No, it was the _ease _in which he spoke these little details that unnerved Clara the most. _As if it meant nothing. _She went cold at the thought and shivered again.

… But no, that couldn't be it. Clara shook her head, correcting the thought in silence. _If he remembered it when he could barely remember himself, then it had to mean something to him. _But he kept all his emotions sheltered in a careful cage, removing hints of them from his voice that was pitched so low, so gruff, the way Clara always imagined a devil might talk when he appeared before a despairing soul, eager to make a dark pact.

The Doctor's pale eyebrows shifted very slightly, looking back and forth between her eyes, which were determinedly not returning his gaze. "Any ideas, Clara?" he asked. His tone was low, politely curious.

Clara didn't understand why she had to keep thinking of shadows and ash whenever she heard him speak. _Blame it on the hair. He's gone a bit grey. _"I don't understand," she said, shaking her head. "How can you do something but say it wasn't you? Unless you were possessed?" Clara paused to consider this, and to silently consider the man standing on her left. "Can that really happen?"

She moved her eyes over to the Doctor as she said this, waiting for his response. In the past when she took a guess and ended up wrong, the Doctor... the _other _Doctor would hurriedly rush through his corrections and explanations, hoping to get to the part where he smiled at Clara and charmed her into repeating the expression. Now, though... Clara simply didn't know where she stood. No matter what she said, no matter how far-fetched her guesses or suggestions became as they travelled to this or that star, or got locked on this or that planet's heretofore undisturbed haunted tomb, _this _Doctor would stay silent, and stand utterly still. He would look at her dead on, his head straight and his eyes regarding her with an unreadable expression, filling Clara with a frisson of thoughts, most of them confusion that was fast bordering on fury.

"What?" she asked – no, _demanded._ Clara pressed her fingers harder against the console, seeking either balance or support for the blood rushing out of her cheeks down to her heart, filling it almost past the point of sanity. She could feel her arms start to shake, and a distant pounding rose up in her head, like a hammer meeting a nail it was determined to beat back down into the floor. _It wasn't always like this. I never used to be this way, _Clara thought, without a trace of regret.

"If you have something to say, you should say it," Clara continued, gesturing to the Doctor, this _new, _older, quieter, bizarrely attentive Doctor, one whose silences seemed to draw more words out of Clara than she was ever used to saying. Thankfully it was nothing like her nervous chatter during that disastrous Christmas, where all her nerves frayed with every passing second. No, she was different now. That carefully carved face with its watchful eyes drew words out of the very pit of her, lending them a kind of courage she hadn't often felt. It made her uneasy. It made her edgy. It made her feel strangely _aware_, focused, alive.

It was terrifying.

He wasn't moving. He barely blinked, though he was regarding her with the same laser-like intensity as he had when he first appeared in this very ship – in this very _spot_. At least he wasn't swooping down on her now, like a bat dressed in tweed and lavender.

_Batty swooping would be much better than this, in all honesty. _He was so _cold_, so inert, yet so attentive. _What's he waiting for?_

Clara lifted her hands off the console and folded her arms tightly over her chest, digging her fingers into her arms in a hard grip. "Doctor?" The word, the title, the name itself was said as a last, desperate act. Perhaps if she said his name she'd dig the old one out again, what possible trace of him remained. Did she want that? Is that what she was looking for? Clara chewed on the inside of her cheek again and thought of a hollow little word, one of the last she ever said to the _other _one. _No. _"Hello, Doctor?"

He came alive at the word, or perhaps it was her voice that did it. Clara wasn't sure. She watched the Doctor blink, then move his eyes to the Noiaphone resting on the console, extending a single finger to lightly tap the various buttons on the face of it. "Of course it can happen," he said, as casually as if there wasn't a long gap of silence between her first question and his response. "Possession is entirely possible, Clara. All it requires is matching brainwave patterns and a bit of a psychic overflow – I suppose it helps if you're naturally gifted at it."

"Do they only hire mediums at Nornia, LLC?" Clara wondered.

"Mediums and a few low rent, garden variety psychics," the Doctor said. "But even the charlatans make for easy vessels to control."

His voice was hollow.

"Is that what happened here?" Clara asked, leaning her elbows on the console and frowning as she looked closely at the Noiaphone. The Doctor was handling it so gently, with a purpose, but he kept tapping the same buttons over and over again in a pattern. Starting at counter-clockwise, creating a strange rhythm Clara couldn't quite place. She felt her jaw tighten and listened to her heart pound again. "Doctor, it would really help if you actually said something about what's going on. What _happened _to this man?"

"Something."

"Don't be coy," she spat out, lobbing a side stare at him.

"I'm not," the Doctor said. His voice had gone vague, his attention ebbing off Clara. "That was the other one, wasn't it?"

"I guess it was." Clara watched the Doctor tap out the pattern for a few more turns, willing herself to be as still as stone.

After a few minutes, she heard something click inside the Noiaphone. The left side of the device popped open, and a thin piece of black metal emerged from its hidden sheath. A light was flashing at the tip, a steady red beam that reminded Clara of the lights on top of towers, warning aeroplanes to maintain a certain altitude to avoid a crash.

… "_We're probably crashing."_

Clara took a breath to steady herself.

The Doctor lifted the small piece of metal out of the Noiaphone with a pair of pliers, and held it out far from him, leaning his head back to get a better look. One of the older teachers at Clara's job did this when he was trying to read the paper in the staff room. Clara couldn't help but smile as she looked at the Doctor, struck by this charming, passing bit of character from a man who was otherwise so disarming, but she removed it from her face by the time he turned to her again.

"It's got your name on it," the Doctor said.

"Me?" Clara reached to take the cartridge out of his hand, only to have his free one come up to block her fingers.

"Don't touch it. It's fragile." He added, "Use the pliers if you want to get a closer look."

Clara tried to keep her fingers from grazing his when the device changed hands, but she failed. Admittedly she wasn't trying _too_ hard – his hands were electric and warm, despite how utterly cool the rest of him could be, and what she needed right now was warmth. She looked into his eyes and found none there. Just the same razor-sharp focus that had greeted her since he burst into life in a blaze of golden light.

Clara lowered her eyes to the strange device and read what was written there. No, _carved, _as if the edge of a fine little knife, or even a needle, had been used to create the message: _To Clara, who deserves to know._

"Deserves to know what?" Clara's voice felt strained as it left her throat. She could hear it rise in pitch in her own ears, sounding more like the nervous little squeak she so hated, the kind she used when she felt trapped, the kind she used at Christmas, _on _Christmas, in that little town he held so dear and fought to keep safe for centuries. _And leaving me behind. Twice._ Her heart continued its steady rhythm, and when Clara looked into the Doctor's eyes this time, she saw for a brief blinding second a hint of warmth, a ghost of something like sympathy living there. "Doctor?"

The ghost disappeared. "I'm going to try to get the message to play from the beginning," the Doctor said, taking the pliers back. He seemed to have no problem touching her hand; his fingers moved with the same careless ease that his voice used to speak her secrets, and Clara watched as his face became still as stone again, the eyebrows drawing forward into a folded line of concentrated, thoughtful fury. "I'll let you know when it's fixed."

_Is he telling me to leave? _Clara wondered, waiting. She got her answer within seconds. The Doctor paused to consider her, tilting his head as if burdened with the weight of the new thought. "You like to spend time in the library when I'm busy with something tricky, yes? Or was that the other you?"

"There is no other me," Clara told him. She wasn't sure if the echoes counted. She wasn't sure if _he _counted them. _They had nothing to do with him, did they? _Clara couldn't be sure. Her memories of all those scattered, far off parts of herself – hers that _weren't _her, doing things she did but _didn't _do – came to her sometimes in dreams, or returned in flashes like buried memories, triggered by a scent, a sound. All it took was for Clara to hear a laughter that echoed down from an apartment on a higher level, or the cry of a stray cat lost in an alley, or to see glass punctured and cracked, creating little crystalline, spidery webs, and suddenly she would be above herself, outside of herself, looking down on a memory that she hadn't lived, but received all the same.

_Maybe being possessed is like that, _Clara told herself. She was starting to see how a man could say with heartfelt conviction _"I did it, but it wasn't me."_

Again something flashed in the Doctor's eyes. Clara didn't think it was warmth, not this time. _But what? _"No, I guess there isn't," he said. His voice was hollow again. Clara left him to his experiment and walked the familiar path back to the library. She could feel his eyes on her until she turned the corner and disappeared from his view entirely.


	2. Chapter 2

Some try, some cry  
Some die - who are you?

- Mary Elizabeth McGlynn & Akira Yamaoka, "Different Perspective."

* * *

Clara was just starting to doze off by the time the Doctor came for her. She didn't notice his approach, nor did she hear it. Her head was held up in the cradle made by her hand, the elbow planted on a stiff armchair the TARDIS had installed in the library during its most recent redecorating. _Probably to match the pilot, _she thought, chuckling at her own cleverness. Her mind was growing dimmer with the obliterating black fog of sleep crowding all around her, and all sounds were silenced except for a distant sigh crawling from the back of her thoughts. _No, not a sigh... More like a whisper..._

_Noun sum cawl is eyre em._

"Wake up, Clara." The Doctor said, his voice flat and rough. But not loud – no, he kept his tone soft in that moment.

With a soft little sigh, Clara shifted in her seat and opened her eyes, her vision blurry for a few seconds. It seemed as if a pillar of shadow and streaked with crimson stood on her left, behind the armrest she had been leaning on. Clara tilted her head back, blinked again and rubbed a knuckle across her eyelids, forcing the cobwebs from her vision. She tried looking at the Doctor again.

_Still dark red, black, and grim. _"Find out anything?" she asked.

"Most of the message was too damaged to understand," the Doctor said. "What little I actually could make out didn't make any sense... but I did learn one thing that could prove useful."

"That's good," Clara said, waiting for him to continue. His silence filled the space between them – a space, Clara noticed, that wasn't too large at all. She could reach out to touch him without barely having to unbend her arm. Not that she would. She still hadn't forgiven him for mentioning that freckle on her rib.

_Is he going to _make_ me drag the answer out of him? _Clara wondered, dimly amused. _That won't be happening._ She began to swing one of her legs as she waited, dragging the tip of her shoe across the floor.

The Doctor's eyes dropped to the pendulum swing of her leg before he returned his gaze to her face. "I'm sorry, am I boring you?" he asked.

"Not at all," Clara said. "I was waiting for you to finish."

Clara kept her eyes on the Doctor's mouth, and more specifically his teeth, when he answered her again. "Do you remember anything about your echoes, Clara?" he asked.

A punch to the jaw would have been more gentle than this question. Clara reeled, sucking in air between her teeth. "What?" she asked, the words like a gasp.

"Your echoes," he repeated, speaking baldly, completely unconcerned with the look of horror on her face and the fact that he was a target of her wide, disbelieving stare. "Do you remember them? The parts of yourself you ripped off and threw out along my timeline?"

_They were more than that, _she wanted to argue, wanted to... and didn't. _They were so much more – but they weren't meant for _you. "You asked me about this before," Clara said. She was dimly aware that her voice didn't sound as thin and nervous as it had earlier in the console room, when he said the device had her name carved into it. _Guess I should be happy about that._ There wasn't much else to cheer her up in that moment. "Remember? When all three of you couldn't find a way out of an _unlocked _room in the Tower of London."

"That was the other one, Clara," the Doctor reminded her, his voice lowering along with his chin. He stared down the length of his nose at her, and for a moment Clara watched as the tension moved out of his jaw and throat and rippled down to his hands. She watched them curl into fists, the fingers bending one by one. It didn't occur to her to be afraid. _He's not scaring me, _she realized as one might notice flaked, rusty specks of blood on their finger from a cut they didn't remember bearing. Dim, detached, with a brief kick of surprise. _He's not scaring me, because he's only doing it to steady himself._

"You didn't answer my question," the Doctor said, tugging Clara out of her thoughts once again.

Clara didn't know how to answer it. "I don't know. I don't think so. No."

"Those were all three different answers," he said, and for the first time that day Clara saw him smile. It wasn't exactly a smile, not quite. Not a proper one in Clara's mind. But his eyes flashed with an old familiar light that warmed her as his hands had earlier. And since Clara didn't _feel _he was being menacing, or anything but just a bit cheeky, she didn't see the harm in smiling back.

Just a quick smile, though. A little twitch of the muscle that raised her cheeks for a few seconds. _More of a smirk, really._

"What do they... my echoes... have to do with the Noiaphone?" Clara asked.

"Probably nothing," the Doctor said, releasing his hands from the knotted fists he'd contorted them into, and instead pushing them into the pockets of his trousers. He made sure to push back the sides of his coat, revealing another flash of red.

_Vanity, thy name is Doctor, _Clara misquoted in silence, and said another silent apology to Shakespeare. She liked this version better anyway. "Then why did you mention it?"

"Because that overwrought fellow on the Noiaphone brought up a nurse by the name of Oswin, and I thought it was far too much of a coincidence to actually be one."

Clara repeated that sentence to herself until it made sense. "Did he say _where _she was a nurse?" she asked, taking her confusion at the idea of another _her _out there having chosen a medical career path and setting it on a shelf labelled _Things to Worry About Later. _She supposed it fit the pattern of the other selves she knew, and the different jobs she'd already had so far in this original life; nurse was in the caretaker category, similar to a nanny or a teacher... _And a governess. And a junior entertainment manager. _Whatever that was.

_**And an arbiter. And a Receiver**__._

A little lancet of pain moved through Clara's neck and up the back of her head. She winced and let her leg fall still.

The Doctor noticed Clara flinch, his gaze narrowing ever so slightly around the edges. He continued to talk, watching Clara cringe against the pain. _Does he care at all?_ "His specific words were, 'thank the woman who was so kindly towards me in the never owl regal nowhere invalid asphalt basement. I'm sorry I couldn't save her.'"

"... I'm sorry?"

"As am I," the Doctor said. "I listened to that part at least a dozen times while I tried to make sense of it. Wasted effort, same as if I'd spoken to the man himself. But I _was_ able to extract a data code from that part of the message, and get the coordinates for where it was recorded."

"Then what are you waiting for?" Clara asked. The pain in the back of her head felt more like a spike now, instead of a small lancet. Now it was comparable to the tap of a chisel hammering through concrete, eager to make the rock crack. Clara's words were as sharp as the aching inside her head, though her temper wasn't in a single uttered word. Her anger had no place here, nor did the bite of her tone have a target.

The Doctor knew this. His eyes flashed regardless as he looked Clara over, undoubtedly amused by her barbed tongue and the words that fell off of it. Clara said nothing. She wouldn't apologize. She had nothing to be sorry for.

"I'm waiting for you, of course," the Doctor said.

"Right," Clara said, the word falling with a hard clunk out of her mouth. "For me. Of course." She wished her head would stop hurting. _Arbiter? Receiver? What's happening?_

Moving slowly, as if he were a clockwork in need of a fresh winding of a critical gear, the Doctor removed one of his hands from his pockets and offered it to her. "Take my hand, Clara. You don't look well."

"It's my head," she muttered, "it won't... stop hurting." Clara forced her eyes to stay open as she looked down to the hand the Doctor offered to her, eager and uneasy at just _how _eager she was to put her hand inside his and feel his fingers close around her own. Clara's mind called up images of gilded cages and bear-traps lined with silk and velvet and satin draped over every sharp jutting tooth, put in place to disguise the malice. _A golden prison is a prison all the same._ Clara pushed these thoughts away. They certainly didn't help with the ache that was moving down along her jaw, fighting hard to keep her teeth pressed flat against each other, molars meeting molars in rigid contest.

"I can see that," the Doctor said, all softness. But his hand held hers tightly, and once Clara was on her feet he didn't seem interested in letting it go. "We'll find something for you in the console room. Come on."

"Going to live up to your name, then?" Clara asked as they left the library, her moving a half step behind the Doctor not by choice but necessity. Every step moved a dagger through her temple, its blade pointed directly toward the back of her head and the thoughts pressing in there. _Governess, nanny, nurse, teacher_. _**Arbiter. Receiver. **_Always caring, never being cared for. The thought made her go cold again. Luckily the Doctor was still holding onto her hand.

The Doctor snorted at her attempted joke. Clara chose to hear it as a laugh. _Like old times. _Almost.

But not quite.

"Tell me more about the box. Did you actually see the person who dropped it off?" The Doctor shook out a few dark blue tablets into her cupped hands and passed along a tall glass of water once she'd clapped her palms to her lips and put the pills on her tongue. They melted quickly, spilling their bitterness across her mouth, inching closer to her throat.

Clara scowled. "No. They didn't ring the bell or try to knock. I didn't even know the box was there 'til I opened the door. I almost stepped on it when I was leaving."

"Where were you going?" the Doctor asked, his tone pointed. The question had rushed out too fast to make his trained mask of a face be in any way believable.

"For a walk," Clara said, taking a measured sip of the water as she kept her eyes on the Doctor.

"Did you think I was judging you?"

"I have no idea what you were doing," Clara told him, and it was the truth.

"That does not surprise me."

Clara took another drink of water instead of replying. Her glare spoke in her stead.

"I still don't understand why _you _would get this," the Doctor continued, harking back to the point he'd raised earlier.

"Well that cartridge was engraved to me," Clara began. "Maybe whoever delivered it wanted to make sure it reached the right person."

"I'm not sure if you've noticed, but writing '_To Clara' _doesn't exactly narrow down who you've got in mind, much less what galaxy to ship it to," the Doctor said, his accent growing thicker as the sentence carried on.

"Calm down, Doctor. Then they must have been very clever."

"Or they found out about you."

_Okay, _now_ he's trying to scare me, _Clara told herself, hearing her heart kick up another rapid beat. She moved her hand under her elbow and locked it tight against her hip. She finished what was left of the water in this awkward, rigid position. _He's trying to scare me by telling the truth. _"From who?" she asked.

"Who indeed," the Doctor said, not looking at Clara. He took back the empty glass and deposited it into an nearby compartment that had opened up in the console, seemingly for that exact purpose. "Have there been any funny people around you lately, Clara?"

Her eyes sparkled with mischief. "Besides – ?"

"Yes, yes, besides me," the Doctor interrupted. "You have a wretched taste for comedy, darling."

"I could always improve," Clara said, letting her smile last longer than it usually would when she was faced with the stinging bite of the Doctor's swift turns of temper. "No, there hasn't been anyone. Not that I've noticed."

"So there could have been someone, but you just weren't paying attention."

"It's possible," Clara relented, only for a moment. "I think you're carrying this a little far, Doctor."

"Do you?"

"I do," she said, nodding. "And I think you're doing it on purpose."

The Doctor stayed quiet. "What are you talking about?"

"I think it's just as possible that _you _put the box in front of my door."

"Why the hell would I do that?"

_So I would call you._ "So you could see me again."

"I can see you whenever I want, can't I?"

"Not always," Clara reminded him. "Not all the time."

They stared at one another in silence, both of them tracing their minds back over similar memories. Clara wondered how he saw it. The Doctor had a habit of showing up at her flat unannounced, yes, usually when she was in some stage of deep sleep, barely conscious when she answered the door on his third or fourth ring. He would stomp over to her kitchen (after muttering a quick hello and a request to come in), slamming down the kettle before Clara could even shut the door and redo the locks up again._ At least he pulls the chair out for me. _Clara rather liked that. _Sometimes he even has biscuits._ Then there were times he barged into the middle of her lessons, his sudden presence and loud voice making her go red in the face, putting Clara's temper to its highest suppressed setting, causing her to lose all train of thought. There was nothing to do after that but excuse herself from the class, ignoring her students' soft titters of laughter fluttering throughout the room as she dragged the Doctor along with her.

The Doctor said, "Course it's not _all _the time. It never was. And you've got a different schedule now," he spat out. If he were another man, perhaps even the _other _him, Clara would say he sounded close to a pout. _Not this one. Not this Doctor. _Jagged honesty, and dregs of bitterness. _That's the recipe for Twelve, or... whatever number he is now._ "I can barely wrap my head around it."

"You could always write it down," Clara suggested, lifting her chin to indicate the blackboard that stood in a battered wooden frame towards the back of the console room. Calculations scrawled out in a language Clara couldn't read covered almost every inch of the board, save for a small black corner on the bottom right that had been left entirely blank.

"Why waste the time when I know you'll turn up sooner or later?" he sneered.

"And when if that fails, you could always try presents." Clara couldn't help but laugh when she saw his expression – light, open, dare she say it,_ charming – _suggesting that he was about to agree with her. At least, until he realized the trap she had set.

"I didn't send it to you, Clara," he grunted, looking her in the eyes.

She returned his stare fearlessly. "I believe you," Clara said after a moment had passed. "It didn't look like your handwriting, either." _Though he was rather quick to hide the card when I showed it to him, _Clara remembered. She tucked this information on her _Later _shelf, along with the Nurse Oswin problem, and the trigger to the headache that was, mercifully, starting to fade.

"How d'you know that?"

Clara motioned again to the blackboard.

"Yes, yes, you got me there. … Are you ready to go now?"

"_Where_ are we going?" Clara asked. That question, at least, had never changed, even if she sometimes had to adjust the _where _to a _when._ Nor did it seem that the little thrill of excitement issuing through Clara had changed at all. It still started from the crown of her head and moved its way down, igniting every nerve of her. _His face isn't the same, _she thought, surprised at how little this was starting to bother her,_ and his behaviour's downright ghastly... but at least _this_ hasn't changed._

"Nornia, LLC, naturally," the Doctor said, and he set about putting in the coordinates, darting around the console with light, quick steps. Clara watched him, faintly proud that he had taken to flying the ship after she had struggled to explain what little she knew about piloting the TARDIS back to him. "The extracted data matched that area."

"Will they be glad to see us?"

"I can't see why not," the Doctor said, glancing up at Clara from beneath his pale, short lashes. "Are you worried we'll run into trouble?"

"Not worried," Clara argued gently, "just expecting it."

"I'll find out what's happened, Clara. I promise."

This shift into a serious tone startled her more than any of his tempers. "Surely there's no need for dramatics," Clara said, and she started to laugh until she remembered where she was, who she was talking to, and what they were likely facing. _A madman in another solar system knows my name – or a me that isn't me, anyway... Hello, new Oswin – and sent his last will and testament to my house. _Or, at least, _someone _at Nornia, LLC knew how to ship an intergalactic package. Clara would be impressed by this if she weren't busy feeling slightly disturbed, and worse, invaded.

"I'm not being dramatic," the Doctor grumbled. "It's called sincerity."

Clara nodded to show she was listening, but she leant the Doctor only a fraction of her attention. _Who else out in space could know _exactly_ where I live? _she asked herself. _Who else but the Doctor? _

She didn't like that thought. She didn't like it at all. Clara had said she believed the Doctor didn't send the package to her, and she meant it. But she couldn't shake her mind off the way he'd pocketed the card so quickly after she passed it to him, nor the way the familiar, panicked voice from the Noiaphone had said, over and over again, a mantra marking madness, _I did it, but it wasn't me! I did it, but it wasn't me!_

_He could have done it and not known what he was doing, _Clara guessed, keeping her eyes on the Doctor, on his hands, and on the bits of his wrists that were revealed when he reached out to tug at a dial or adjust a lever. She eyed the way his jaw tightened and the muscle beneath it clenched, kept her eyes on the way his thin lips could look so fierce and rigid, like a man made of marble. Clara kept her eyes on all of these pleasing little parts of him as the TARDIS lurched forward, responding to the coordinates and commands she was given.

But what could possibly manage to possess _him? _Not only did it seem impossible to happen to the Doctor, but _this _Doctor, this... _I barely know what to call him. What were those names again? The Beast. The Valeyard. The Oncoming Storm._ It was downright absurd.

Clara dug her nails into the console and planted her feet, trying to keep herself rooted to the floor as they rattled on through the vortex to their destination. She felt his eyes on her again, though every time she lifted her gaze, thinking to return his own, Clara saw that the Doctor's eyes were lowered, focusing only on the console. _Strange, _she thought. But she knew she couldn't be wrong. Someone was watching her – someone had her in their sights as certainly as she was looking at the Doctor. Caught in this would-be harrowing thought – watched by someone she couldn't even see – Clara didn't feel a thing like fear. Its dread cold fingers did not stray near her heart, nor did it brush a single inch of her spine. She put her_ For Later _shelf to use again, setting this thought up next to the headache trigger and the determinedly casual way the Doctor had hidden the card.

_Distract yourself, _she suggested. _What did the man say? Never owl regal nowhere invalid asphalt basement. …_Whatever that meant. Perhaps Nurse Oswin would be able to shed some light on that mad babble. _If she's still around, _Clara corrected herself, her hopes punctured and lying limp on the floor of her mind. _"I'm sorry I couldn't save her," _the man had said. So what had happened to her?

What, exactly, were they getting into?

_And what does it even have to do with _me?

Clara looked up for a moment as the TARDIS came to a halt, drawing herself out of her thoughts this time, without the help of the Doctor. He was looking at her calmly, and in his eyes she saw something new taking shape. It was a look of wariness, bordering on suspicion. Clara returned his stare with gusto, the same emotions intact.

The Doctor smiled, but it only darkened his eyes further. "Let's go, Clara."


	3. Chapter 3

Two feet standing on a principle  
Two hands digging in each others wounds  
Cold smoke seeping out of colder throats  
Darkness falling, leaves nowhere to move

- Daughter, "Still."

* * *

Clara took one look around the front hall of Nornia, LLC's headquarters and scowled. "It looks haunted," she said.

The Doctor let out a little sound that could have been a laugh or a swear. They sounded remarkably similar coming from this man. "It's not haunted."

"I didn't say it _was_. I said it _looks. Looks_ implies that it _could _be," Clara said.

"Yes, well – it's not," the Doctor muttered, removing the sonic screwdriver from a pocket inside the scarlet lining of his coat and brandishing it with an angry flick of his wrist. He began to move the sonic in slow, tense sweeps, the faint orange bulb at the end creating a pitiful speck of light in the otherwise nearly pitch-black room.

Clara kept her hands in the pocket of her coat. A fine sheen of sweat was starting to dampen her palms. Her headache had disappeared, or at least the pain of it had: the throbbing was still present, like a heartbeat. In the pain's place Clara felt as if her thoughts were suddenly weightless, vague bits of fluff that passed through the surface of her mind with no hope of taking root. It was similar to how her mind drifted off on nights when she fought hard to sleep.

And yet... _It feels like suffocating. Like there's not enough space to think or...I'm being crowded out..._

"Clara?"

"What?"

"The torch, please?"

Clara removed the torch from her pocket – it wasn't an impressive device by any means, small enough to run the length of her longest finger down to the vein in her wrist, with a light that was diluted and gold, but large enough to make sense of some of the shadows in the lobby. She turned it on and watched the Doctor take a few exploratory steps forward into the lobby, one hand tense at his side, the other focusing the sonic on various points of interest.

Clara stayed put on the almost absurdly out of place welcome mat, moving her torch around the room at whatever caught her eye. There were tattered banners hanging from the wall high up near the ceiling, and deep cracks and tears in the plaster wall, as if someone had beaten it with a large hammer, or part of the foundation had crumbled beneath that section of the building. Clara thought she saw dark smears like finger trails moving away from these fissures. Her mind immediately turned to blood... and then rejected it. _Don't think about that. Stop thinking about that. Stop it._ Her _For Later _shelf was being put to an awful lot of use.

As Clara moved the torchlight to a drab little couch in front of a coffee table, coated in dust and magazines and Polaroids, she heard the Doctor tut. "A little help, Clara?" he asked, glancing over his shoulder.

Clara moved the beam of her torch to where his sonic was pointed and stepped closer to his side, her arm grazing his bent elbow. There was a long wooden counter on the left-hand side of the lobby, with a tall shelf of wooden compartments hanging on the wall behind it. Clara could only faintly see nameplates attached to the little wooden dividers between each compartment. They were a musty yellow color, the way the pages of a book age as if they were coated in tea stains. Most of the nameplates were peeling off at the edges and some were removed completely, leaving behind bright rectangles which stained the faded wood like pale coffins.

"Is that for post?" she asked. "Inter-office memos and to-do lists, things like that?"

"Why are you whispering?" the Doctor asked, his hard voice moving through the lobby as if the sheer weight of it could make up for the lack of life.

"Because someone might hear us."

"I want them to hear us," the Doctor said. "I want them to find us, too. Usually those run-ins lead to some answers." He moved the sonic away from the desk and towards the right. Clara followed with her torch. A wide, carpeted staircase rose up from the lobby to the first proper floor, which was currently blocked off by a wooden gate. Someone had decorated it with metal charms, cloudy moons and stars that dangled off little rings which glowed silver in the moonlight pouring down from the window in the ceiling. Clara could see flecks of dust moving in the air around these charms.

"I'm not sure if anyone we'd find in a place like this would be considered helpful," Clara said, watching the dust move in the pale moonlight.

"They'd have to be if they're here," the Doctor insisted, lowering the sonic with a sudden jerk. His eyes were on the gate leading to the first floor, regarding the obstruction as a personal offence.

_That's right, _Clara reminded herself quietly. _The sonic"doesn't do wood." _She rolled her eyes.

"Though no one seems to be here," the Doctor continued, unaware of her internal monologue. "They all appear to have shuffled off this mortal coil."

"And what does that mean?" Clara asked, though she'd heard the phrase before. _This mortal coil... Oh yes, that's right. Hamlet, naturally._ _To be or not to be._

… _And he was also haunted by a ghost, _a little voice reminded Clara, chiming in with just a bit too much enthusiasm to make her happy, considering the circumstances. _Don't forget that part._

"We're not alone here, are we?" Clara said, moving the torch over to a door on the first floor, tucked into the corner near the staircase. It was ornate and elaborately decorated with diamond patterns and flowers. A hole in the centre of the door seemed to be made for a key, but it was much too small for a key of any kind. There also was no way to open the door: no knob or handle or latch of any kind could be seen.

"Define alone," the Doctor said, looking at Clara.

"We are the only living people in this building right now."

"Yes, we are."

"But there's something else here."

"Yes, there is."

"And it's... dead?"

"Only mostly dead," the Doctor amended. "So I was right, you see. The building is not quite haunted. Not yet."

Clara took a deep breath and nodded, her hair falling over her shoulders to curtain her face. She could feel the Doctor's eyes sweeping over her in a quick glance, trying to pierce the shroud her hair built for her. "Right. Okay. That's not so bad, is it? Considering we've done this before?" she asked, turning to look up at him and putting on a brave smile.

_Your voice is getting higher again, _she reminded herself.

_Quiet you. _"Remember?" she pressed, searching the Doctor's eyes as she carried on speaking. "The witch of the well, who ended up not being a witch at all but a person trapped and in desperate need of help?"

_You're talking too fast._

"Yes, Clara. I remember," the Doctor said, his voice steady, soothing, like a warm hand placed over her trembling fingers.

Clara continued to speak, even if she was the only one to gain heart from the speech. "We got through it last time. We can get through it again."

The Doctor said nothing, but Clara didn't mind. Her own speech had fortified her, and what's more her voice had gotten louder, the pitch dropping as she carried on, until she sounded more like herself. She could now see why the Doctor had chosen to speak normally when they forced the door open to the lobby and entered the dusty, vacant darkness. It was a trick to drive off fear no different than a poker face or a practised smile.

They separated briefly, the Doctor stomping over to the desk, forcing himself through the broken wooden divider with a quick push of his hands. The wood groaned against his touch and fell to the floor with a clatter that made Clara jump.

"Could you not do that? Maybe? Please?"

"I didn't break it on purpose," the Doctor protested before he turned his attention to the wooden compartments and the nameplates printed there.

Clara kept him in the corner of her vision as she she moved to the coffee table in front of the dreary couch. She pushed aside the magazines to get a better look at the Polaroids, proud to see that her fingers weren't shaking. Most of the pictures were pitch black, with a few specks of white light dotting the images. _Like dust, _she thought, her mind turning again to the image of the silver moonlight at the top of the stairs. Some of the photographs, however, had vague shapes getting lighter and larger as Clara continued to stare at them, almost as if the figure were moving _through _the photograph the longer her eyes were on it...

Another crash drew Clara's attention from the Polaroids. She turned to face the Doctor quickly, spinning on her heels, her hair flying and obscuring her eyes as the torchlight flickered once. _Don't go out, no, please, don't die on me._

"Doctor?" she called, her voice cracking. She couldn't see him. Her heart leapt into her throat as she darted closer to the desk. "Doctor, what's happened?"

The wooden shelf was no longer on the wall. It had collapsed into splintered fragments, knocking the Doctor down with it. More dust moved through the air like a cloud, obscuring the wall behind it, but Clara could see more cracks in the plaster here. _And more hand-prints. _She shivered.

Clara leaned over the front of the desk as far as she could go, the edge digging painfully into her stomach as she shone the light down onto his pale grey head. "Are you all right?" she asked.

"Just _splendid_," the Doctor snapped, but it was a toothless retort. If he had the presence of mind to be grumpy, he clearly wasn't hurt all that bad. "I always wanted to lie down on a floor under broken wood and rusted nails."

Clara took the long way around the desk to help him up, planting her feet hard on the ground as she seized his large hand and tugged with all her strength until he was right back up. The Doctor began to dust himself off as Clara trained the torchlight onto him, her eyes moving once again to the wall that the shelf had hidden.

"What happened to it?" she asked.

"I touched it and the... wretched thing fell apart."

"Really?" Clara wondered. "It didn't lookbreakable to me."

"It was," the Doctor insisted.

"See any familiar names?" she asked, keeping her tone light as she looked at him again.

"Like Oswin?" he fired back.

Clara nodded.

"Yes, as a matter of fact." The Doctor kicked his foot against part of the rubble until he could see the floor again. He leaned down and picked up a neatly folded square of paper caught under sharp corners of wood and faded nameplates. "I found this in a shelf marked C. O."

Clara didn't move. She didn't want to take it. Her mind felt heavy, leaden, as if a trap had swung shut and seized her skull in an unrelenting grip.

"Go on," the Doctor insisted, shaking the paper at her. "It's got your name on the front."

"_Which_ name?" she asked.

"Clara Oswald," the Doctor said, drawing out her name until his mouth moved in what would have been a terribly amusing exaggeration of movements. But Clara couldn't laugh now. She had never before felt the furthest thing from happy – not since Christmas. Not since she whispered into the tear in the wall. _"Help him..."_

"_... who was so kindly towards me in the never owl regal nowhere invalid asphalt basement. I'm sorry I couldn't save her."_

Save... Help... _Always caring, never cared for._

"Go on," the Doctor urged her, speaking in his softest voice yet. "It's for you, Clara."

The vise holding her mind in its death grip eased for a fraction of a second. Clara reached out with her free hand and plucked the paper from the Doctor's grip. She unfolded and twisted it to right side up, shining the torch onto the note as she began to read.

The message was simple. "'The key to the first floor residence wing is currently missing. I asked Nurse Oswin about it, but she doesn't seem to know where it's gone either. Please use the side door on the ground floor and take the elevator in the Infirmary until further notice. Our sincerest apologies for the inconvenience.'"

"What side door?" the Doctor repeated.

"It's on the other side of the stairs." Clara said, and she led the Doctor to it, crumpling the note inside her fist, making it a warped ball that she shoved into her coat pocket.

The Doctor and Clara both examined the door close up. The flowers Clara had earlier seen carved into the wood turned out to be large, gaping lilies, the white paint long since faded. The diamond shapes still had traces of gold on them; Clara could see flecks of it glimmering faintly in the torchlight.

Written on the door in a delicate script were the words, _I admit words said and seen._

"How do we open it?" Clara asked, watching the Doctor run his fingers over the words as he repeated them in an undertone.

"It's a riddle. It's asking us for something."

"... The letter?" Clara suggested.

"Let me have it."

Clara removed the letter from her pocket and dropped it into the Doctor's open hand.

He frowned at the knotted little mass of paper, eyeing Clara thoughtfully. "What did you do to it?"

"It wasn't on purpose," she insisted. "It just... happened." She paused, startled by the pressure of the words building up inside her, coming to an ugly head. Finally she couldn't keep her mouth still. "Like when you get really nervous and you can't stop fidgeting or chewing on your lips even though you've got a cut and you can taste your own blood? It's sort of like that. Only without blood or a cut but paper. And a fist."

Clara could hear how she sounded, how madly she was rambling, how hysterical her voice was becoming... but she was beyond feeling embarrassed. The pressure inside of her head was condensing to a refined, focused point, as if it were pushing her mind further away from the words that were coming out of her mouth, detaching her, disconnecting her...

"... Are you all right, Clara?"

"No, I don't think I am."

The Doctor kept his eyes on Clara as he straightened the paper out to the best of his ability before he put it into the small slot in the centre of the door. "We can get through this. You said so yourself. We managed it before."

Clara nodded, but what she said was, "I'll take her away from you, Doctor. She'll be safer with me."

"Who?" the Doctor asked. The door clicked as if a lock were released, and he pushed one hand against the surface as if to shove it open. But he braced himself on it instead. "Who's talking to me right now?"

"I did," Clara said, both herself and the strangling, heavy presence that was crawling out further from her mind, from the back of her thoughts that contained all the things she had shelved, eager to forget. _You can't bury this._ "I did it, but it wasn't me."

"Clara? Are you in there? ___Answer me!_"

She felt his hands on her arms, the grip tightening not to hurt but to hold, to root, to comfort – but she felt none of it.

A cloud seemed to pass over her eyes, obscuring her vision of the Doctor, replacing it instead with a grainy dark shadow. Dust coated the surface of the vision, much like it covered the surface of nearly everything in the lobby they'd seen so far. A tall, thin door appeared in this vision, with a perfectly ordinary bronze knob that Clara reached out to touch, to twist... The door opened, revealing a narrow staircase that descended to a short hallway. This in turn led to a doorless room, as stark and cheerless as any that could be found in a hospital. A faint golden curtain was closed around the only furniture in the room, a bed whose legs had rusted and were beginning to crumble; one touch would cause them to collapse into dust... Clara saw her hand in the vision reach out to pull at the curtain. She could hear the _shhh _noise the metal hangers made as it dragged along the metal bar bolted to the ceiling, revealing a corner of the bed hidden inside the pale gold sheath. There was someone in the bed, and they sat up to greet Clara as she -

"Clara!"

She heard his voice, so different now, louder yes, but strained... almost scared, as if from a distance. _Where am I?_ _Who am I?_

And a voice said, _**Not who you used to be.**_


	4. Chapter 4

You can't just walk away  
You can't choose to ignore me  
I stand in front of you  
A stranger stands before me

- Assemblage 23 "Fallen Down"

* * *

Sensations returned to Clara much like they did when she rose from a long, satisfying sleep. Sounds rushed down into the little spiral shell of her ear, making whispers turn to murmurs, turn to solid, hard words that then took the form of an actual weight inside her head, forcing the oblivion of sleep to stand aside. The sensation of touch returned with a prickling pain, first at her fingertips then moving steadily outward and all over, until she was as aware of the way her toes fit into her ankle boots as she was how her clenched jaw made the back of her teeth ache. Pressure at her back and under her legs let Clara know she was sitting down, propped up against a wall at least, and she wondered why she thought _now _of all times would be the best to rest.

There was no memory of the past few minutes. Her mind was blissfully pristine of anything save for a vague ache in the back of her head, and the awareness that something electric and invigorating was alive inside her hand.

When Clara opened her eyes it was to see not the Doctor's own eyes, as she briefly expected, but his grim countenance set in profile, barely lit from the torch he was holding in his left hand. He was looking at something further down the hall, and though his attention might have wandered his other hand was holding onto one of Clara's. Tightly, for security and comfort – but to take it, or offer it in turn?

Clara flexed her fingers inside his grip. "Good of you to join me, Doctor," she said, offering a smile when he turned to face her, his eyes wild and his stare sharp, with a focus that, if harnessed, could cut as keenly as any blade.

Muttering about "sense of humour," "bad tastes" and "times like this," the Doctor repeated what Clara had done for him only minutes ago in the lobby, pulling her to her feet and helping her find her balance. Clara reached down to dust off her stockings and the edges of her skirt that were coated from the floor and the wall behind her. She realized the Doctor was still holding onto her hand.

"You can let go now," she suggested. "I'm all right. Promise."

The Doctor did so, only to place both of his hands on Clara's shoulders and lean down. "Who is this? Who's talking to me?" His eyes were focused entirely on her gaze, which shifted between either cold, colourless eye in an attempt to find something warm, something familiar, something like the man she knew.

_Or was getting to know. _"Clara. Clara Oswald. Your..." _Companion. Friend. Confused cohort. "_... Pal. Don't you remember?"

"Don't _you _remember?" he repeated.

"Doctor, you're scaring me."

"Oh good, that makes us a pair."

Clara lifted her shoulders, shrugging out of his touch. She took a step back, her foot sliding across the floor, forcing a clearing in the dust and the dirt that created an extra layer on the once gleaming tiles. Her back met the wall and she stuttered to a halt. She could move no further.

"What's wrong?" she asked – as did the Doctor.

Clara frowned. The Doctor's was deeper, and made his wrinkles more prominent.

"Isn't it obvious?" they said, echoing each other again.

"Stop it," Clara insisted.

"You stop first," the Doctor replied.

Clara folded her arms, and was surprised to find it painful. She looked down at her arms for the first time, noticing the sleeves of her coat were pushed up past the elbow.

_I don't remember doing that._

The air seemed to leave the corridor as Clara held her arms out and turned them over, examining the pale red scrapes and discolourations that promised to be bruises soon. The torch in the Doctor's hand was steady as he shone the light on Clara's arms. She couldn't hear him breathing, but her heart had turned into a pounding, deafening roar inside her head. The rush of her blood forcing its way through her veins felt like a scream, matching the panic in her mind. _He would never. Would he? Did he? _Clara shook her head, answering her silent questions.

"What happened to me?" she asked in a voice no different than one might use if someone wanted sugar in their tea. So level, so calm. And a smidge deceptive. "Doctor? Tell me. What happened?"

"You don't remember?" the Doctor said.

Clara shook her head, her teeth catching the edge of her lip not hard enough to hurt or draw blood, but enough to feel the pressure. _Just a nervous habit. _But she was beyond nervous, had surpassed the word and reached instead the shadowed, barbed realm of pure panic.

_Then why do I feel so empty? _Where was the heaving chest, the terse, desperate gasps for breath? The trembling fingers and warm traitor tears blinding her vision? Clara had none of these things – she felt absolutely nothing but weightless, emptied. Just as she had when they first entered Nornia, LLC's lobby and began to look around.

"You were... not yourself, Clara. It wasn't pleasant. It was... Well."

"Give it a word," Clara said, her mind filling up with a dark, choking fog. _What's happening to me? _Why _is it happening to me?_

The Doctor struggled for a few moments, though Clara doubted it was due to him searching for the word. He had it, she knew he had it. _He doesn't want to say it._

"Possessed," he spat out at last. "Possessed or something very much near to it, that I don't see much of a difference. You were also talking to me – mocking, laughing." The Doctor lowered his eyes to Clara's arms and made a movement as if to touch her, but an intrusive thought came up to block the gesture from going through. He stood as still as ever. "… Then you began to hit yourself."

_Impossible, _Clara thought at once. _No, don't use that word. _A corner of Clara's heart still rooted in the past cringed back from the word. _I'm not impossible. I'm no one and nothing else but myself._

And who was that? Clara hardly knew._Caretaker, nanny, nurse, governess – and whatever Arbiter meant. _She ran her fingertips over the bruises, the scratches, the little half moon nail marks that fit hers exactly. "That's... are you _sure_?"

The Doctor nodded once. "Do you remember anything, anything at all?"

Snapshots of images returned to Clara, like the Polaroids she had seen on the table in the lobby. "A curtain and a small hallway." She paused. Was there something more? Clara pushed at her mind, but nothing too useful emerged. She remembered them opening the door with the letter, and then... being on the floor. The gap in between was all darkness and void. "There may have been a staircase? It was... what _was _that?"

"A vision. Or, if you prefer the more accurate description, a cognitive invasion that projected a series of images directly into your mind long enough to leave an impression."

"So... a vision."

The Doctor gave a non-committal shrug. "If you must call it that, then yes."

"But _how_?"

The Doctor didn't answer. _Didn't or couldn't? _"What else do you remember? Anything more?"

She fell silent, thinking backwards again. "There was someone... calling to me. Asking me to stay." The thought emerged from Clara's mouth before it formed fully inside her mind. It surprised her to hear the words, and then flat out stunned her to realize their accuracy. "It was a voice I heard before. Someone I knew."

"Who?"

Clara tilted her head slowly, listening to the echo of the voice in her head. "It... sounded a bit like you," she whispered. She hadn't want to say it, hadn't wanted to admit it out loud because voicing something so ugly and awful only made it true. Kept inside, unheard and ignored, it had the potential to fade away, to even die...

_That's not like me._

_No, it's not._

_Then why am I..._?

They were silent, both of them considering this.

"But that's silly, isn't it?" Clara asked, wishing she didn't want a lie as comfort, wishing she didn't have to ask for this at all. _What's the matter with me?_ "Tell me it's silly, Doctor. Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me I don't know anything about that voice or that other man or what's waiting for me in the basement."

And there she went again, her mouth moving and releasing words that her mind had not forged. Yet they were still true, still hers, still uttered with a voice that only Clara could claim.

"The basement?" the Doctor echoed, but in a moment his mind leapt to the answer. He all but hit the heel of his palm against his forehead. "Ah, of course! 'Never owl regal nowhere invalid asphalt' – it's _coded_ gibberish."

"Sorry?"

"Look at the first letter of each word. N-O-R-N-I-A." The Doctor wrote each letter in the air with his finger. "Our friend on the Noiaphone wanted you – wanted _us _– to know exactly where we should head next, without doing us the courtesy of being more direct."

Clara wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. But what she did was stay perfectly quiet.

Amazingly, the Doctor noticed. He lowered his hand and his enthusiasm dipped accordingly, all success at uncovering the riddle disappearing. The Doctor gently pulled the sleeves of Clara's coat back down to cover her arms, careful not to hurt her. When he offered his hand she took it at once, squeezed it hard enough to feel his bones grinding beneath her touch. She wished that his hand would reach up to cup her face, stroke her cheeks and wipe away any tear that happened to fall; she wished that he would pull her into his arms and rest his chin – smaller and less prominent this time 'round – on her shoulder, bending himself so that he hunched low enough to her accommodate her height, or lack thereof. Clara wished she could have precisely, exactly, entirely what he offered when he was that _other _man – but to have it coming from this new one standing before her now. It might not take away the fear of the moment or the mystery looming around them in the dark, but it would be something more than this awful, terrible uncertainty.

And yet... _Why are you thinking about this? Why is this even in your head when your mind is half-gone and your thoughts are barely your own? _The voice was insistent, and the words a stern reprimand on par to the strictest lectures Clara overheard as a child in school.

_Because it matters_, came her silent response. _Because it means just as much to me as finding out what's happening._

The Doctor put his hand on the side of Clara's face and held her there, tenderly running the tip of his thumb across her tearless cheek. "You know more than you should know, more than it's _safe _to know. We shouldn't be here._You _shouldn't be here."

Clara waited, leaning into his touch. She lifted her hand to hold against the back of his own –

… which is when the Doctor stepped back, and took his touch away. "Go back to the TARDIS and wait for me."

The ribs in Clara's chest seemed to close like a trap around her heart, all steel teeth with no silk to soften the hurt. Not this, no. Not this again. "I'm not going anywhere until this is over."

"It'll be safer for you on the ship, Clara. So _go_."

"I have every right to be here, Doctor. We wouldn't have landed on this planet if I hadn't come to you in the first place..." Clara took a steadying breath, reasoning with herself as much as she was with him. "I want to know what's down there; I want to know _who's _down there. I deserve to know."

_And apparently whoever sent us on this ghost hunt agrees, _she added silently. _"__To Clara, who deserves to know." _Though she was starting to think this offer wasn't exactly made with her best interest in mind. She wouldn't call it a trap, but she could hardly think of this whole exploration as something akin to a _gift_, not anymore. Clara thought again about the twisted, bitter expression on the Doctor's face when she had shown him the box containing the Noiaphone, the stray thought she had about the difference between _gift _and _Gift_, present in one tongue, poison in another.

But she wouldn't listen to him. She wouldn't leave. She couldn't. She was tired of the mysteries, tired of the confusion and the doubts about herself and whatever spectres lurked out of sight, out of reach, but never out of influence. It wasn't just because of the changes happening to her – it went beyond a personal matter that required her to tough it out to the end. _It's as much for him as it is for me._

Wasn't it always? _Always caring, never cared for. _Would that continue into this new era she had with him, this new arc branching off into the uneasy unknown? This trip to Nornia, LLC was setting an uncomfortable standard. It was their first adventure together, their first investigation off of Earth and beyond the nearly unfeasible realm of trying to figure out where the other stood. New face with a new mind to match, with thoughts Clara once believed she knew as well as her own. _The heart of another is a dark forest, _Clara reminded herself. _How much darker would two hearts be, then?_

_How much darker does your heart seem to him now?_

_Stop it. It's not me._

_It is. __**I am.**_

_Stop._

The Doctor's voice cut across her thoughts, silencing the voice within. "Onwards and upwards, then? Or downwards, if your talk about the basement is true?"

"Onwards and downwards," Clara said, taking the torch as the Doctor handed so he could go back to handling the sonic. He aimed it at the lights in the ceiling, scowling when all he could manage was to produce a few feeble flickers; the bulbs sputtered to life briefly.

"Interference," he muttered. "Someone's blocking my frequency."

"Wouldn't happen to be the same mostly dead chap you mentioned earlier?"

"Most likely."

A few of the rooms in the hall were open, the hinges discarded on the floor next to the doors themselves. Clara and the Doctor peered inside each of these, finding items of varying interest in all. One was a storage closet, the shelves laid bare except for a few large, empty white bottles marked Lethe XR, which the Doctor claimed to have seen before.

"When?"

"Long, long ago, in a New New York that's far, far away – further than we are from Earth now. … I was with another friend." The Doctor turned the bottle over in his hands, scowling at the list of ingredients printed on the back. "Only it had a different name back then – they called it what it was: _Forget_. More on the nose than this, but I suppose that's for the best. What's it doing here?"

"You said Nornia was a communications company. Probably used it for their work." Clara reached out to push a few boxes across the shelf, frowning as she found more empty bottles of the same product. "Must have been popular. They're nearly out."

"Why would they stockpile a drug based entirely around _forgetting_? Punching holes in your memory seems a bit of a hindrance for any form of communicating, yeah?"

"So you could enjoy the same conversation more than once?" Clara offered.

The Doctor considered this. "May have a point there."

The next room was an office. Desks were pushed together to create a large square in the centre of the room, covered in folders, strewn papers, and lamps whose bulbs couldn't even muster up the strength to response to the sonic's insistent presence. Clara skimmed a few of the papers on the closest desk while the Doctor banged the sonic against his palm, muttering under his breath.

"Doctor, listen to this. 'Worker 546 confirmed to have made contact with the quarantined subject, despite repeated attempts to keep him away from the basement. 546 remains incapable of explaining himself at this time, despite repeated questioning. He has been confined to a cell in the Infirmary until further notice. Orders are to initiate a decontamination sequence, and a thorough examination to ensure he has not Seeded. Dr. Vary has been contacted.'"

The Doctor joined Clara at the desk. He reached out to press his fingers against the note, flattening it beneath the torchlight as he read the note again. The rest of the page was torn off, though Clara could see another sentence beginning lower down, now rendered illegible. She perused the other scraps of paper on the desk, but nothing too helpful emerged from the search. Apart from charts covered in a series of jagged red spikes and block-lettered memos that always started with the menacing, "Arbiter Status: Unstable," the rest of the papers were long-since faded, the ink nothing more than faint scratches. All Clara could deduce was that the workers were identified by numbers rather than names ("Must've done wonders for morale," "Assuming the authority even cared," the Doctor offered), and that the only other confirmed name on the staff, besides Oswin, was Dr. Vary.

"What does it mean by _Seeded_?"

"A condition that would require decontamination," the Doctor said.

Clara raised her eyebrows. "Figured that bit out, thanks. I meant have you heard of it before? Is it some kind of code for infection?"

"It's possible. Probable. Highly so." The Doctor's voice was quiet, contemplative. Clara was starting to get used to this habit of his, though she couldn't help but contrast it with his earlier custom of talking at top speed until an answer emerged from the ramble. He was also less jittery as he concentrated now, retreating further into thought until it made his entire body, wire thin and impressively tall, grow rigid, ready to spring. "Could refer to a sort of mental displacement, brought on by exposure to the subject they've got quarantined. In the _basement_, no less. Seems quite popular."

"That's putting it lightly," Clara said, aiming the torch at the Doctor's face to catch his expression before it faded. There was a faint smile there. "So what should we do? The note said to take the staff elevator up to the first floor, but everything else is pushing us to the basement."

"Why not go to both?"

"We aren't going to split up," Clara insisted. "I've seen enough movies to know how that ends."

"I wasn't suggesting that we should – what sort of movies?"

"Scary ones. Poorly written with rubbish endings, usually with a twist about a long lost sibling being hell-bent on revenge. I wouldn't recommend them."

"Why are you watching them, then?"

Clara chewed on the inside of her cheek. She muttered her response.

"Sorry? Didn't catch that."

"Lost the remote," she said, louder this time.

The Doctor blinked at her.

"We don't all have a sonic. And it won't work if I try to change the channel from the box. The button's jammed."

To his tremendous credit, the Doctor did not laugh.

There was one room in the hall that still had its door properly hinged, and what's more was completely shut. Clara turned to it and stopped, waiting until the Doctor joined her. "What d'you think? Is that the cell?" she asked. The door looked thicker and far sturdier than any of the others in the hall. White scratches, as if from fingernails, lined the front of the metal slab, and there was a window towards the top part of the door meant for a taller person to peer through. Nothing but darkness could be seen inside. Clara didn't feel quite brave enough to shine the torch into it, uncertain if she wanted to reveal what was there, if anything.

The Doctor placed his hands on the door and leaned in, turning his ear to listen close. His expression was difficult to read, and his eyes lowered to peer at the metal slat in the bottom part of the door. Clara looked at it; it reminded her of slots for food trays, and was small enough to admit nothing larger than a human arm.

Taking Clara by surprise, the Doctor knocked on the door.

"_Honestly_?" she whispered, her voice full of exasperation.

The Doctor scowled at her, his eyebrows jutting forward. He curled his fingers shut, and knocked again.

Very faintly, so light that Clara could hardly be sure she heard it, someone knocked back, mimicking the same rhythm of taps.

"Who's there?" the Doctor asked, whispering the words to the door.

Clara took in a deep breath and made a pained expression, just barely resisting the urge to stomp her foot. "Doctor, _please_."

"_... please_," a voice whispered back.

"Who are you? What's your name?"

"_Name_...?"

"Yes, your name. I'm the Doctor. The grumpier voice is Clara. We're here to help."

"_Help._"

The Doctor and Clara shared a look. "Is there an echo in there?" he asked, keeping his eyes on Clara.

They waited for the next response, Clara keeping the light on the Doctor, the Doctor keeping his hands on the door, and the voice in the room keeping them on an uncomfortable edge.

"_No," _it said at last.

The Doctor gave the door a little pat. "Good, you can talk for yourself. Got a bit concerned for a moment. I met a mimic before – that wasn't its proper name, mind you. It had no name, none that I ever learned. It tried to steal mine, though. And my voice."

Clara blinked.

"It was a terrible day," the Doctor added, looking at her. "I meant to have much more fun than it turned out to be."

"And where were you then?" she asked, still whispering.

"On a diamond planet, with another friend. She stayed behind."

"You _left_ her there?"

"No, I meant she never came with me on the trip. She fancied the resort more."

"Smart woman," Clara said, louder this time.

The knocks on the door turned into a slam at the sound of Clara's voice, far more angry than they had been at the start of this conversation. They had become insistent now, demanding and loud enough to send echoes down either end of the hall. Clara jumped as she took a step away from the door. The Doctor straightened up and narrowed his eyes at the window at his exact eye level.

A shadow had passed over the glass from the other side; the sight of it made the Doctor's expression darken.

"Oh, _don't_," Clara moaned as the Doctor peered into the glass, cupping his hands around his eyes.

"May we come in?" the Doctor asked, ignoring Clara's protests. She glared at his back for just a second before turning her eyes to the door, just in time to see the metal slot at the bottom slide open.

"No!" She acted on instinct, grabbing the Doctor's arm tightly in her hands, ignoring the lance of pain that moved through her at the sudden gesture, the pressure it put on her already sore arms and muscles. Pulling him back with as much strength as she could muster through her fear, Clara steadied herself on her feet as the Doctor flailed briefly before righting himself as well, looking rather undignified and startled.

An arm emerged from the slot, ghostly pale – and transparent. Clara stared at it, wide eyed, disbelieving, unsure how she could possibly be seeing exactly what she _was _seeing. Her hold on the Doctor tightened to accompany the jolt of fear that burned through her, before it became clear that they were not only out of the arm's reach, but that it was more pitiful than it was fearful. They watched as the hand groped blindly, its fingertips dancing across the floor from side to side in a low, searching sweep.

Neither the Doctor nor Clara said a word. In silence, the Doctor pointed his sonic at the arm and gave it a quick scan. The arm seized with a sudden spasm, the fingers contorting as if with pain. Clara thought she heard an inverted scream, more of a gasp than anything else, coming from behind the door before the arm slipped back through the slot as quickly as it had appeared.

The Doctor immediately sank to the floor, turning his head to peer inside the gap. Clara crouched and used the torch against her better judgement, lighting up the slot as the Doctor moved closer to it. _Please let nothing pop out of there, _she begged to whatever benevolent force existed in the universe. _Please let nothing pop out of there, please, please._

Something small and dark shot out before the slot closed with a tight snap. The Doctor raised his arm in time to prevent it from hitting his face, and it clattered down to the floor with a metallic _ting, _landing next to Clara's foot. She picked it up. It looked like the small device that had been inserted into the Noiaphone, and just like the other one this too was engraved.

"It's for me," she said, stunned. "'_To Clara, who deserves to be heard.'"_

The Doctor pushed himself to his feet, patting his hands against the sides of his trousers, tutting softly at the stains left behind. "Give it here, Clara," he said, opening and closing his hand in a small, reverse wave.

Clara handed the device to him. She went cold, and folded her arms to suppress the shiver that was worming its way down her back. "We can't listen to it here. The Noiaphone's back on the TARDIS."

"Might be able to match the frequency on the ore inside," the Doctor said, gritting his teeth as he held the sonic up to the side of the device, glaring briefly at the engraving.

"Unpack that sentence for me a bit," Clara said.

Still struggling with the device and the sonic, moving his tongue between his clenched teeth, the Doctor did just that. "Noiaphones and these little contraptions," he said, waving the device between his fingers, "are made from a material native to this planet. It's called Empathite, a special ore that can mimic the psychic patterns of those who expose themselves to it for long periods of time. The Noiaphones were designed to amplify this connection, and speed up the process to a mere few seconds."

A burst of static leapt from the device, much like it had done when played through the Noiaphone on the TARDIS. But it faded quickly, replaced with the same voice from before. He was far more frightened this time, his words drowned out by his own panicked, shallow breaths. The words filled the hallway, louder than the slams from the other side of the cell door, rebounding off the ceiling with enough force to shake dust from the rafters.

"_Gone! Gone missing, gone far, gone for good, gone wrong – get going, going, _gone. _That's what they warned me would happen, that's what they told me would happen, that's what _SHE _asked me to do before it was too late, before they got to me_. _But I wouldn't listen. I couldn't listen. Not after I heard what that man ordered, that man calling himself the doctor – he's no doctor, he's no man. Beware the false healer, I said. He wears the doctor's face but it's not him – it's _not him!_No one believes me. They all see the same man but I see a different one – same eyes, same skin, same bones, same voice, but there's _another _lurking inside that face. He calls himself Dale Vary but he's not our Vary, no. He's not ours at all – and he wants _HER. _No one listened to me, and now they're going, they're gone, one by one by one, they drop like flies. _SHE _believed me, but they took her away before we could stop him – they've got her in the basement and I'm in here, but I won't let them win, I won't let him take her away again. I'm coming for you, Oswin. I'll be there soon I'll be there like I promised, I promised you, wait for me, Oswin, wait -_"

More static filled the air before the transmission died.

"Perhaps we should try the basement first," the Doctor said, "Get the worst over with." He stowed the device into the pocket of his coat and, after a moment's hesitation, held out his hand for Clara's. She took it without thinking, surprised that it was no longer warm and comforting, but cold and trembling slightly.

Clara tightened her hold on his hand, offering a sympathetic squeeze and a smile that had never failed to earn one in return. It didn't fail now, but Clara kept her eyes on the Doctor's gaze, turning it into a careful study. His eyes were clouded, shrouded, and distant. She couldn't grasp even a hint of the thoughts inside.

Nor could the Doctor guess at hers.


	5. Chapter 5

"I'm here to paint you with my tears,"  
Decried my spirit over my fears  
I can't walk away from all the years  
Serene inside, she reappears

**I know who you are.  
**- Serj Tankian, "Deafening Silence"

* * *

A vaporous veil, like that of tears long dried but still clinging to lashes and the sore, swollen lids of heavy eyes, moved through the air as Clara and the Doctor got closer to the lift at the end of the hall. _Finally. Not that that didn't take a bit too long. _But before she could savour this hard-won victory, Clara's eyes stung from the effect of this strange cloud, and she blinked hard, rubbing her free hand against the corners of her eyes.

"D'you feel that?" she grumbled_._

The Doctor only bristled in response, glaring balefully at the empty air as if this too contained a grievous personal insult.

"Miasma," he said at last, muttering between his teeth.

Thinking back to a vocabulary list she had compiled for her class some weeks ago, Clara's brain drummed up the dictionary entry for the word. _Miasma: a dangerous, foreboding, or deathlike influence or atmosphere._ She let out a dry laugh, free of joy. "Right. Miasma. 'Course it is. What's causing it?"

"Seeing as it's not a _normal _miasma..." the Doctor started.

"There's _normal _miasma?" Clara wondered.

"Yes of course there is," the Doctor spat out. Then he paused. "Er, not on your planet. Not yet. Won't make an appearance 'til 4114 Winter Olympics. Suppose I'll have to pop in to make sure that goes over well."

"... Doctor?"

"Right. Miasma. Here it's a sort of gaseous release, a noxious end product of all the Empathite mining. But... that's only for the _mines;_ what's it doing in the building?" He coughed into his sleeve, pulling the lapel of his coat over his mouth to filter the air he breathed and checking to see that Clara did the same. The Doctor nodded his approval before continuing his explanation. It came out muffled. "Can you see anything?"

"'Course I can," she said, squinting through the sudden wisps of darkness that began to weave over her eyes like dark threads falling down from the ceiling, creating a veil to brush aside. Clara raised her hand to move them, and watched with relief as these obstructions passed aside... until she realized there was nothing to touch.

_I'm seeing what isn't there? _Clara blinked.

The vision in her left eye turned monochrome, a startling sharp change from the colour-filled, normal vision in her right.

The part of Clara's mind that had remained weightless and detached ever since they arrived in this decrepit building, relaxed in the tiniest of fractions for the first time. It was so different from the wave that had rushed over her when they stood in front of the ornate, diamond-decorated door, when her vision had first gone black and white. Back then her thoughts trembled, fragile and wild, along with her heart. But the change in her vision was undeniable. _It's happening again, _she thought, seized with the terrible thought like an iron fist closing around her bones, intent on snapping them to splinters. _It's happening again, it's happening, she's back –_

But before the panic could move further down Clara's spine, the Doctor was there. He hadn't stepped closer to her, nor did he cup her face as he had earlier on, but his presence was a rooted, solid thing, a source of comfort greater than Clara could have expected. It was his voice that cut through the icy fear inside her heart, his words setting down a foundation as true as any steel. "Look at me, Clara. I'm here. Talk to me."

Clara moved her eyes to peer up at the Doctor's face, but the vision in her left never changed. She was staring down the same hallway they stood in now, though the floors were clear of dust and dirt; the doors were all on their hinges still, and some were even open to let out light and a few pensive, tense faced, white-clothed workers. When she peered down to examine her body it looked much like the one she occupied now. _Good. Not sure how I'd have handled a different one of those._ Same legs with the same knees that didn't quite match, symmetrically speaking: one was rounder than the other, whose bone came to a more angular point. She even had on similar black boots with a large wedge heel, along with matching black tights that disappeared up a starched white dress.

_Hang on._ She ran her hands down her hips, watching as in the left eye she flattened the white dress, and in the right she ruffled the folds of the tartan skirt.

"... Clara, what are you doing?" the Doctor asked, nonplussed.

"Seeing two of me," she said. "A me and a me that isn't."

Clara lifted up her hands and peered back and forth from the colour in the right to the monochrome in the left. _It's mad, this is. Absolutely mad. _And there was no denying that it was, but this experience, however curious, was not without its level of intrigue.

It was the little differences that struck Clara. She had her nails painted in the left, all the varnish had chipped long since off on the right. And she saw a thick, dark mark across the back of her left hand along the little blue stream of the vein that always stood out prominently. It looked like a tattoo. _Poor place for it. _But there was a curious weight to the mark, much like the way a scab can fasten onto the skin around it for leverage, preventing the wound beneath from being revealed before it's properly healed. Was something grafted onto her? A chill went through Clara, but only down her right arm. The arm in her monochrome vision remained rigid, unmoved.

"Can't we save the self-admiration for later?" the Doctor asked, his voice like a wedge driving through the bizarre illusion that caught Clara's attention. "A little decorum and perspective is all I ask, especially given the circumstances."

"Calm down, Doctor. It's not that at all," Clara argued quietly, watching as her left hand extended in the black and white vision to prod at the buttons next to the lift. It happened once more, and then again after that, a looping replay like an instruction manual come to life.

_Best take my own advice. _Clara extended her right hand to scratch at the filth covering the buttons. Her fingers came away crusted with black, as if she had been digging into the ashes of a hearth. But the buttons beneath the grime were now revealed, showing a quartet of bone white options. B, GF, 1F, 2F. She pressed her thumb against GF, hard enough to make her arm shake. Nothing happened.

"Doctor? Little help?"

Staring sidelong at Clara, the Doctor held the sonic to the button and nodded. She pressed the button again. It lit up, and from two floors above they could hear the groaning of gears and the hushed murmur of the elevator answering their call.

Clara stepped back to watch the lights above the doors to the lift. 2F was lit up now, but was starting to fade as 1F became bright. Her left eye was peering up at the same sight, deprived of all colour. "It could be quite useful, this double-vision."

The Doctor was left quite figuratively in the dark. "What are you seeing? Tell me."

"It's that nurse – the other me who goes by Oswin. At least... I _think_ it's her. It has to be. She feels just like I do." Clara looked at the Doctor for the first time since this change emerged. He appeared only in her right eye; there was nothing but a blank wall in the left. _Oswin's alone, then. _The thought made Clara feel a brief whisper of sadness. "It's not the same as last time, Doctor. It doesn't feel as the same. I'm not suffocating."

"Always a positive."

"And my mind's my own this time. See?" Clara smiled as she heard the doors slide open, the lift having arrived on their floor.

_What on earth is a smile going to prove? _She asked herself. Clara wasn't quite sure, but she had a hunch that whatever had taken over her mind earlier certainly didn't spare the time for any grins. _It was too busy leaving cuts and bruises. _Was that Oswin? Clara couldn't be sure. She didn't like to think so. _But if not her, then who else...?_

The Doctor said nothing to this strange pronouncement, but Clara saw his lips twitch. _Better than nothing. _Clara turned to face front and walked into the lift, just as Oswin was in the vision.

"What's happening now?" the Doctor asked once the doors shut.

Clara and Oswin pushed the button for B and stepped back. "The same that's happening here. We're going for a trip downstairs." A sliver of ice took root in Clara's heart. "Is this what the man on the recording warned us about?" Clara wondered out loud, wishing she could get a tenor of Oswin's thoughts. They were removed from her completely, rendering the echo's motives and sentiments utterly unknown.

_That's not fair, _Clara thought with a frown. _If she can take over my head so easily why can't I get a peek inside hers?_

The doors began to slide shut –

A hand in Clara's left eye darted forward to stop the doors from closing. She heard Nurse Oswin's panicked voice leap out of her throat, and felt her face burning with embarrassment. She stepped forward to paw at the doors, and then grope for the button that would open them.

"_I'm... sorry about that, __sir.__ Are you hurt?" _Nurse Oswin's voice was a muffled undertone, heard only in Clara's ear as a monotone to match the monochrome.

"_Not at all," _came the man's reply. Clara knew that voice. Gruff and soft, in a lower range that barely raised above a grouchy murmur. She knew that accent, too. But she didn't recognize the smile, bright and charming, making the wrinkles that appeared around his mouth and in the corners of his eyes not indicators of age but of deep, heartfelt joy. _"It'd take more than that to knock me down, I'm afraid."_

It was the Doctor. But it was also not the Doctor. Just a man who wore his exact same new face.

Clara's back met the wall of the lift. She could feel the cold metal beam pressing against her back, but only at a distance. Always, everything, all of it out of her reach – feelings, thoughts, the truth. _Even his face __is something I'll never know, never understand__. Why is he here? What is he _doing _here? _The man in Oswin's vision said it belonged to a survivor of Pompeii, and Clara saw no reason why he would be lying about that.

_Even if he was, it doesn't change the truth staring me in the bloody face_. Then why was it the same, the _exact _damn same, as the face the Doctor wore now?

"Doctor...?" Clara's voice was a speck of dust in the air, lost in all the stark oblivion of white and black.

"What? What's wrong?"

Clara flinched when he tried to touch her, riveted by what she saw through Oswin's eye.

"_Have you heard, then?" _Oswin asked, stepping aside so the man could stand at her side in the lift as the doors slid shut again. _"About Mister... I mean, about worker 546?"_

"_I have." _This man's voice became frigid stone, though his expression contained hints at his former warmth. _"That's why I'm here. What do you make of it, Oswin?"_

"_Er, well..." _Oswin began to pick at her cuticles with her nails. Clara could feel her fingers trembling, all the telltale signs of nerves running haywire, but the woman's heart remained a mystery.

"Clara!"

"_Well, it's... come to my attention that worker 546 has taken repeated and extended leaves of absence for the past several weeks, citing medical reasons. It began around the time you had your own, er... accident. __The same day, it would seem. Twenty-fifth of December, if we go by the Earth calendar.__"_

The man grinned at this, putting Clara in mind of a skeleton. "Seems_a bit like a cursed day, doesn't it? __It was __hardly my most enjoyable Christmas, personally speaking. Had to spend half of it in absolute agony, and then the other half in the hospital. But at least I survived the procedure," _the man who looked far too much like Clara's Doctor said, chuckling without a hint of mirth. _"__At least I got to choose my own face before the operation. They say it belonged to a survivor of one of Earth's worst natural disasters – some place called Pom-pay? I figured it might give me a bit of the man's luck, seeing as I had none of my own."_

Clara must have made some kind of sound because the Doctor's voice was louder now, closer. She could feel his breath on her cheek. "Clara, look at me!" His hands were cupping her face, pulling it up gently so that her eyes were locked onto his... but Clara couldn't see him. She could only see what Oswin saw, the ghost of her lurking in the miasma that was coating the very air they breathed.

"_And how was your Christmas, Oswin? You know, I never got a chance to ask... I haven't seen much of you since the procedure."_

_"I came to visit you, doctor."_

_"Did you? I must not remember it. You'll forgive me."_

He didn't ask for her forgiveness, but he expected it. Clara felt Oswin's jaw clench briefly before she answered. "_Actually, my Christmas was quite lovely. Very quiet, until..." _Oswin's voice trailed off as her eyes glanced down to the black bar on the back of her hand. _"__Well, until worker 546 started to take a bad turn."_

"_That's... __almost __good. __Part of it was, anyway.__"_

Clara was not fully convinced of the man's concern. She wondered how Oswin felt about it. _"… I've also been told he suffered severe mental trauma in a mining incident last month, __after part of the shaft collapsed and trapped him.__H__e was given higher doses of Lethe XR __to help cope with the emotional symptoms of his ordeal, but i__t appears to have... exacerbated an already existing problem."_

"_Are you referring to the target of his... er, attentions?" _This other doctor asked.

Oswin inclined her head. _"Yes, Dr. Vary."_

"_Try not to worry __about him__, Oswin," _Dr. Vary said, offering a more credible attempt at a sympathetic voice this time._ "The man is quite clearly deranged – or nearly there, which is as good as, all things considered."_

"_He was making perfect sense to me, doctor. At least... until he started mentioning you. That's the one part I don't understand."_

Dr. Vary tilted his head as he considered Oswin. Clara shivered; it was the same steady, solid gaze the Doctor was so fond of now, the same one she'd seen when trying to pry an answer from him in the TARDIS. But it was different somehow, an element was missing in Dr. Vary's eyes that Clara had sensed in the Doctor's. _But what?_

_"Perhaps he heard of the operation and didn't quite understand. I don't think we'll ever know for sure. This is all a great__ tragedy, I'm sure. __But we have to keep ourselves focused. Let other people mourn him – if there are any others__."_

"_We can." _The words were soft, quietly delivered, but with a will that Clara felt inside the marrow of her bones. _"We __can, you and I. We __worked with him, doctor. __We worked _on _him. __We __were__ his colleague__s__."_

"_Not sure I'd go that far."_

"_We're still responsible for what happened to him. If it weren't for your... our project, he would still be the same man that walked into this building on the day you hired him. __We ruined him. Both of us. Together. ... For her.__"_

Dr. Vary's laugh was an awful sound._"__Is that why you were so keen to listen to him when no one else would?__ A__cting out of a misplaced__ sense of responsibility... Or __was__ it guilt, I wonder? Guilt, shame, and..."_

"_Call it whatever you like. Whatever makes you happy. __It's all the same to me.__"_

Dr. Vary's answer was little different than a practiced sentiment delivered by rote. It had all of the form, and none of the feeling._"The truth makes me happy. This _project_ makes me happy. Helping _you_ makes me happy."_

Oswin and Clara both shuddered at this obvious lie, this clear-cut, self-congratulatory nonsense. Only Oswin could address it however; Clara was speechless, powerless, able only to peer into the past and hope it ended for the best._"Then help me stop it. Help me finish this, before it goes any further."_

"Clara... Clara, please. I'm asking you – I'm _begging_, talk to me. Say something. Now!"

"_Why should I? It's my life's work, you silly girl. And you want me to destroy it all just like that? __You __played just as much a part in all this as I did – you _asked_ for my help. Remember?"_

"_Not like this. Not at all like this. I set this awful thing in motion __and you stood by my side, ready to help__. But you were acting out of turn. You claimed a place that wasn't yours to fill, wasn't even offered to you." _Oswin's voice was rising to a higher pitch, just as Clara's did when she was in a panic. The words were spilling out of her and she spoke rapidly, a sort of frenzied gallop. _"__It was never you that I was after, never you that I wanted. How could you possibly have thought that? How vain were you? Or are you still?"_

"_... Are you sure you're feeling all right, Oswin?"_

"_I've never felt better, doctor. On the contrary, I've never felt more like myself."_

"_Then I wish you would talk sense."_

"_I'm making perfect sense. I'm speaking from the heart, __and the hearts of all the ones like me, me and yet not me. All the ghosts of me that couldn't be here today, that would only live while I dreamed, or while I let you _work _on me__. __All those lost girls. Nurses and nannies and managers, students and teachers. I think I was even a baker once. But y__ou never even cared for __them, for me... You__ only pretended to need __us__. But that's not new. That's hardly surprising. I've known all along what you were after."_

"_Have you?" _Something about this discussion and Oswin's graceful descent into honed, carefully controlled aggression seemed to amuse the doctor greatly. His lips were shifting into a mixture between a smirk and a smile, and his eyes were alight with grim satisfaction.

Clara's heart skipped a beat, as if she had missed a step going down the stairs. She wished she knew how Oswin felt in that moment: she herself had never felt more terrified. _Not even when facing a Dalek or Skaldak or a Cyberman. Not even when the Doctor, this Doctor, my new Doctor stares at me in silence, offering me nothing but a frozen expression. _He would never be as awful as Dr. Vary looked in that moment, however. How did Oswin manage it, standing eye to eye with his rigid, awful man? Clara couldn't understand.

Oswin began to talk again, her voice louder than it had been before. She had hit the stride of her temper and was riding it out to the finish._"Of course __I do__. __Or __I can guess close to the mark, at least. You're after your own ghost, aren't you? __Some shade from the past that's got her claws in you.__ Why else keep th__is__ project a secret __from the rest of the staff, the board...__?"_

"_Surely you could see that I have my__ reasons, Oswin. Even if __I__don't__ see fit to share them with you."_

"_And I've kept my eyes open, I've listened hard to what you wouldn't say __each time you brought me down for another session. I __pieced together the truth, __everything you wanted to hide, everything that made you interested in me at all__: you're the same as me. Chasing after your own lost Lenore, your own haunted girl... Who does she look like, __doctor__? __Tell me. Are we twins__?" _Oswin's laugh was cold, cruel and low. Clara had never heard such a sound from her own mouth before, could never imagine herself being so heartless. _"Women who live and die and are reborn all over again, impossibly, across time?"_

_I'll never be her,_ Clara vowed to herself. _That will never be me, never. I'll never lose my heart._

Oswin continued._"I __'spect__ it's why you gave me this job, you know. Because I looked like her. Your little __sad __dream girl. I was hardly qualified for the job, I knew that going in... that's when I told you about my dreams. Pretended I could barely keep it to myself, but oh, what was the harm __in sharing it with someone who might care__? 'Nornia hires all sorts of people,' my dad said. 'Especially the _sensitive, _superstitious lot.' __Lucky for us both I wasn't lying, eh, doctor? Lucky for us both I was being haunted just as much as you."_

"I'm here, Clara. I'm here... Right here.."

Clara moved her hand up to cling to one of the Doctor's wrists, grateful for his touch, even if she had no words to spare that might soothe his heart.

_"What are you on about now?"_ Dr. Vary sighed, but he was still smirking, still pleased.

"_You know what I mean. __Those dreams I told you about, of a man calling to me from a cold, dark place, and dozens of versions of myself splintering off and running out to find him again." _Oswin tilted her head to the side, considering Dr. Vary as carefully and cruelly as he considered her. _"That's why you hired me, isn't it? You can say it. Might as well, since I don't see either one of us walking out of this building alive. Go on. Tell me."_

_"Is that a threat, Oswin?"_

_"Of course it is, don't insult me by even taking the time to ask. Say it, doctor. That's why you chose me. __Not just because I'm wearing your dream girl's face. It's__b__ecause you know how it feels to be haunted by your own dreams. You have ones like that too, don't you?"_

Dr. Vary said nothing, but Clara and Oswin could not fail to notice that he was now fully smiling.

Oswin's words were like a tap with no hope of stopping. They flowed from her as steadily as blood gushes bright and hot and heavy from a torn artery. "_I knew it. I knew it all 's all it took for me to say yes to you, __once you finally worked up the nerve to ask me to participate in the project. I had to pretend I wasn't excited about__ this whole plan of digging up the ghosts of the past, __acting as a Receiver to all the lives I once lived__... __Even though it was all I ever wanted. _They _were all I ever wanted.__ I grew up with them screaming inside of my head. For years and years and years they were all I had to call friends. Over time I even learned to love them, all those women who haunted me each time I went to bed. They were there, waiting for me, ready to talk to me each time I went to that room __downstairs __and whispered into that little stone you'd sewn into my hand."_ Oswin was laughing, high and mad and tremulous. It made her entire body shake._ "Didn't you know that, __doctor__? Didn't you ever guess? It wasn't for you. __What I did... the things I've done, the people we've worked with and hurt to get to this point today... __It wasn't ever for you. It was always for _me, _for _her_ – for Clara."_

Dr. Vary was silent. Clara's Doctor was still pleading. She wished she could speak to him, wished she could say something to comfort him, but it was hard enough lending him one ear and offering the other to what Oswin's ghost had to say.

Oswin moved her hand into a fist and slammed it over the panel of buttons when the lift doors started to open. Her movements forced them shut again. Dr. Vary watched this with a vaguely curious expression, coupled with a cruel, cutting gaze. For the first time Clara felt something of Oswin's heart: she knew it was Oswin's because there was no fear there, no fear at all like what Clara felt inside. Oswin was _happy._

"_And if you're as far gone as I think you are, doctor... If you're half the man I hope you are, then you'll help me. You'll help me help her, the one at the heart of it all. Because she's lost so much in so little time. She's given so much of herself to so many, and she's never had anyone return a single thing. I wouldn't be alive if it weren't for Clara."_

"_Are you sure about that?"_

"_I've never been more sure of anything in my life. I know her. I know her heart. I am as much a part of her as she is a part of me."_

But that couldn't be true. Clara rejected it with all the energy she had left to spare inside her heart, energy that wasn't being spent keeping her on her feet, preventing her from collapsing into another bruised, confused heap on the floor. _There is no other me. _Hadn't she said that to the Doctor, the man who was nearly in tears, _actual tears_, staring at the confusion and the tears that were moving down and across her own face, her eyes frozen in visions of the past and the present?

A strange thought entered Clara's mind then... a whisper of some secret, buried knowledge, as if her very bones were alive and imparting wisdom to any who saw fit to listen. _Never mistake silence for acceptance, for tolerance, or even for weakness. _Clara thought of her new Doctor's silences, the way he would stare at her with his distant, veiled eyes, his jaw clenched tight as if gnawing on the words he might have once said long ago, with another face and another voice, and another accent entirely. She never knew what to make of his lack of words, never knew if he was simply baiting her to talk more, to beg him for an explanation... or if he was simply admiring the parts of her mind she saw fit to share. _Even if it felt like I was rambling, the words still had some value to him. They still meant something to him – and he was silent because he listened._

In contrast, Dr. Vary's silences felt like the instances between where a trap was set and a trap was sprung. All sharp metal and jagged, ragged claws hiding behind silk and velvet. _Did Oswin know? Did she even guess? _Perhaps she didn't care.

Clara thought she knew why. She'd_ take him down with her, if that was his plan._

And what would Clara do? What could Clara possibly do with this information, this terrifying revelation of her Doctor, this new yet impossibly old man sharing a face with a man from the lives of one of her echoes?

_It's him, but not him. He did it, but it wasn't him._

Another thought struck her, brushing over the pain like a balm meant to soothe. _Didn't Oswin mention an accident that put Vary in the hospital? An accident around Christmas...?_

Clara cast her eyes over the Doctor's face, wrenching her thoughts and her attention out of the vision with every bit of energy she could muster. What had that other Doctor said, the one in the pin-stripe suit and the sandshoes? _The one he called vain._ "_Regeneration, it's a lottery." _What if this turn around, the Doctor had the foulest, unluckiest of hands ever imaginable for a Time Lord's regeneration: the face of someone who _already lived_? He'd went and got himself a face from history, a face of a survivor – one of only a few to crawl from the flames and ash of a tragedy.

And didn't _that _sound familiar?

_It's him, but not him. This is my Doctor, but he is not the same as Oswin's._

The doors to the lift slid open in silence. There was no light here, no light at all, and Clara's torch only vaguely illuminated the small bit of space around her and the Doctor – _her _Doctor. Not Oswin's, whoever that man was. _Dr. Vary... Dale Vary... _What sort of man was he? Clara could hardly know, and Oswin's thoughts were unknown to her, walled off and quartered in the safety of the silence of the dead.

All Clara could do was compare and contrast what Oswin saw in her doctor to what Clara saw in the one facing her right now... _A hideous fire and a quiet rage, the mute passion of the obsessed. _None of that was in her Doctor's eyes in that moment; Clara saw nothing but fear in his face, fear like a dark blot obscuring his vision, filling it only with Clara's face and its half stunned, half slack expression. Like a dreamer caught in limbo, like a haunted man tormented by his own ghosts.

The Doctor still held her face in his hands. Moving slowly, as if the fog obliterating half of Clara's senses had claws and leaden weights that made her movements sluggish, she pried his hands off her, lowering his arms down to his sides. Her voice was a husk of its former self when she spoke, but never had Clara wanted to speak as urgently as she did then. "It was us. It was us all along, Doctor. You and me, together – but a you that wasn't you, and a me that wasn't me, either. Echoes or... or imitations, stand ins. People with our voices and faces, reaching out across all of time and space until they found us... We have to put an end to what they set in motion. We can't rewrite time. We can't stop them from ever starting this. But we can end it, this little piece of it, right here. Together."

"Not a single word of that made sense, Clara."

Clara took a long breath and began to explain to the Doctor what she'd just seen. All of it. Everything. She carefully omitted the just _who _Dr. Vary looked like, though she mentioned Pompeii and saw the Doctor's eyes tighten.

Once her story was done, the Doctor chewed on the information in a silence that lasted barely a second. His hearts seemed to have been made up long before Clara finished speaking. "All I know is for certain, all I've ever known to be true, is that I trust you, Clara. I trust you – no matter who else you've got haunting the place up there." He tapped his fingers gently against Clara's temple and leaned down so their foreheads met in a brief, a kiss of flesh and bone beneath. "I always have. And I know I always will."

Clara almost laughed. It was hardly the time or the place, standing face to face in a lift, in a building bathed in all the shadows and grime of miasma; standing face to face, breathing in each other's words and promises, along with the polluted air of broken, rotten people reaching out from a dead past to claim the lives and minds of those who could bury their foul legacy once and for all. There'd never been a time in Clara's life that was less appropriate for a laugh. But she didn't see the harm in compromising, at the very least.

So she smiled. And the Doctor smiled with her.

What Oswin saw vanished, the past turning to a small blot of darkness that, with a blink, Clara put to rest. _It was so easy. Like switching off a light. _But the past was still there, waiting to be greeted, as were the ghosts reaching out from the once-believed oblivion of death.

_And we'll face them. Together._

They stepped as one off of the lift and peered into the narrow hallway, the very same one Clara had seen in her earlier vision. She glanced up at the Doctor, who turned his eyes with great reluctance off of the doorless room at the end of the corridor and onto Clara.

"Got a plan?" she asked him.

"Ah... I was rather hoping that you did."

Clara chewed on the inside of her cheek. "Let's start with the easier bits, then. How do you get rid of miasma? Do you know?" _He must know. He has to. … Please know how to, Doctor._

He didn't disappoint. "Usually by finding the source and hoping you come out lucky in the face-off. Asking nicely always works. Perhaps offering it some comfort food?"

"Doctor, please."

"That usually works when you're sad," the Doctor offered.

"Not always," Clara sighed – and then stopped, a sudden thought seizing her. "What about those recordings? Those messages on the... er, psychic USB drive... things."

"Psychic USB drive things," the Doctor repeated flatly.

Clara shrugged. "What else would you call them?"

"You almost had it, believe it or not. They're Echo Drives. And what about them?"

"What if we destroy them?"

The Doctor paused to consider this – then paused again to consider _who _said it. "A bit violent, wouldn't you say?" he asked, not sounding all too opposed to the idea, but certainly reluctant enough to go through with it.

"Fine then, not _destroy_, but... surely we can cleanse them, or - or do something to replace the memories left on them?" It was a long shot – beyond a long shot, it was a complete reach in the dark for a chance at a spark Clara didn't even know existed. _But I have to try. _She had to take it. _For myself, for the Doctor... and for Oswin._

The echo's priorities may have been horribly twisted, and she may have set out on the path to doing a good deed with far too much guilt overshadowing every step to consider it _justified_, but a part of Clara couldn't resign herself to being completely disgusted. _She was me... but not like me. Not a thing like me. She dreamt of all the selves I ever had, all the selves I ever made when I jumped into the Doctor's timestream. I barely remember them, but Oswin... she remembered every single one. And she_ knew me.

Was it any surprise that Oswin would want to help them, help all of them? That Oswin would want to seize any chance she could to find a way to capture their thoughts, their feelings, all of their memories that would otherwise be lost in the ether of the bleak, black, merciless universe? _Clara Oswald – always caring, never cared for. Always running, never resting, never being remembered as she properly, truly was._

... But that wasn't quite right, was it? _Took him a bit in the end, but he got there. _And Oswin never knew that. What else could have driven her mad apart from the horrible, haunting fact that so much of herself could be given to someone else without ever knowing there would be a recompense for the sacrifice? _She was an echo, yes. And maybe a broken echo... but she was much a part of me as the others were, with just as much value. She deserves better. _I _deserve better._

Clara pushed her hand into the pocket of her coat to take out the Echo Drive she'd stowed away there. The other was in the Doctor's hand. They shared a glance.

"What should we replace it with?" she asked.

How quickly the answer came from his lips, as if he knew all along what Clara intended to do. "This moment right here. You and I, face to face. As no one else but ourselves."

Clara squeezed the Echo Drive tightly in her fingers. The Doctor did the same. _He'd said it was fragile. He said I shouldn't touch it, that I should be careful – _but the Doctor was holding onto the curious device as tightly as Clara was. _He wants this to end just as much as I do. He wants this over and done and buried and gone –_

In the distance, from the doorless room down the hall, something heavy and wet hit the floor.

A speck of fear moved across Clara's mind before it went dark and blank, replaced by the black and white vision from before. She saw a hand reach out, its fingernails as rotten and dark black as the fingers barely clinging to the flesh of the sunken hand. Slowly, carefully, painfully did she crawl across the floor, dragging a body that seemed incapable of any strength save for what she forced into her arms. Clara saw the wall facing the open doorway, a cracked, sad plaster affair that was only a few feet ahead from where they now stood, as if she were only a few inches off the floor. She turned her eyes to the left as she cleared the door, limp dark hair moving across her eyes like threads banding together to create a veil, an obstruction...

Dragging herself and groaning, muttering, croaking with a throat long since turned to a vague notion of flesh and veins and sinew, what was left of Oswin after all this time lifted up a hand and reached it out for Clara. She saw without seeing, who spoke without speaking.

_**Noun sum cawl is eyre em?**_

Clara saw herself through Oswin's remaining eye as she approached the woman who was half ghost, half dead, and entirely heartbreaking. "That's right," Clara said, crouching down next to this shattered echo, this girl who only ever wanted to keep herself safe and whole, even if it meant losing her heart in the process. "We're different, Oswin. I'm not like you. I'm nothing like you now."

With the Echo Drive in hand, Clara reached out to rest her hand on the back of Oswin's, her fingers grazing the black scab and the stone buried inside the skin. "You're not who you used to be. I'm not who _I _used to be - I know better know. I know you. I _remember_."

It was hard to say for sure what Oswin did next, upon hearing this. She had so few teeth left, and what remained of her lips had already peeled back into a permanent, menacing grin that often happens to the rotting bodies of those we love. But Clara liked to imagine that she smiled. She liked to imagine that the last thing Oswin did on this mortal coil, the very last, gasping thread to which she clung, was to do something as nice as that.

She wondered what the Doctor saw. Wondered, and didn't ask.

* * *

Later, on the TARDIS, in front of the blackboard the Doctor had bolted to the floor, Clara picked up a piece of chalk and began to write in the small bit of space he'd left blank. _Dale Vary, _she wrote, and stepped back to peer at it. The name... There was something about it. _Another code?_

The Doctor approached Clara quietly, and stayed that way for some time. "Something wrong?" he asked.

"Have you ever heard of him before?" Clara asked, pointing at the name.

"No, I haven't."

Clara folded her arms and tapped her chalky fingers against the side of her bicep. "Could it be code for something?" she wondered. "I feel like I've heard it before." _The Beast. The Oncoming Storm. The..._

"The Valeyard."

She turned to the Doctor. He'd said it, not her.

The Doctor reached out with one hand and ran his finger through the name in one long, erasing streak that left his fingers stained, and the blackboard barely clean. "Imagine that. A me that isn't me at all."

"Doctor?" Clara's throat closed over just enough to make speaking and breathing two nearly impossible, yet absolutely vital, tasks.

"What is it, Clara?" he asked, his voice velvet soft and curious. He wouldn't look at her. Clara wasn't sure if she wanted him to.

"What... who is the Valeyard?" She could barely move, though a part of her was screaming to do more than step back. It was yelling at her to run, to hide, to do anything she could to put as much space between her and this man right this instant, right this very _second_, now, now, _now._

_Oswin and the others didn't die for this._

The Doctor's smile was all charm and kindness. What's worse, it was perfectly sincere. "I wouldn't worry about him, Clara. He may have got to Oswin, but he can't hurt you. I won't let him." The look he gave to Clara, sidelong and sharp, cutting like any new knife would have done, reminded her of the vow he'd pledged to her in the basement. _"__All I know for certain, all I've ever known to be true, is that I trust you, Clara. I trust you – no matter who else you've got haunting the place up there."_

Clara unwound her folded arms and reached a hand out to stroke the Doctor's face. She said nothing for a moment, and then nothing else for the rest of their trip back to her doorstep. The Doctor did not challenge this silence, but he did lean in to the warmth of her fingertips with a ghost of a smile on his thin lips.

She did not return the smile. But she did stand up to give his cheek a quick, fleeting kiss. "Stay as you are, Doctor. Stay exactly as you are, as I know you right now."

Hadn't she said that once before to the other him? And hadn't that turned out exactly opposite to what she asked? _"__No, please, please don't change!"_

The Doctor put his hand over her own; his fingers overlapped hers with ease, and he held her palm to his face, prolonging the touch. "Of course, Clara," he said, his voice quiet, funereal, hushed.

And she believed him. Of course she did, and she trusted him, too – and yet there was a part of her, a small, flattened bit of thought that crawled out from the _For Later _shelf of her mind that still wondered at the dark flashes she caught in his gaze. A part of her that paused to consider his cold silences, his cutting stares, and the way she found herself shrinking away from this hidden beast less and less as the days of their companionship stretched on, soon becoming weeks, then months...

Clara wondered what would happen when she stopped moving back from him completely. At least she had a speech in mind to describe the occasion. _Non sum qualis eram. _I'm not who I used to be.

She looked forward to the change.


End file.
